Thread by @AWWritesStories

Ted Wilson is not stupid. So he must know that when he refuses to directly address the Capitol attack and instead says insipid things like this, it will be seen as affirmation by the Adventists who took part in/supported the attack on the Capitol, right?

Let's break it down. White supremacist Adventists (and yeah, there are a lot of those), can easily read this as Satan's obstacles = bicycle barricades/Capitol police/democrats, but the GC president is here, encouraging them to hold fast to their faith & stay strong. How nice.

And before some of you start wailing that that "CLEARLY" wasn't the intent of his tweet, I'll say intent has very little to do with interpretation, and how do any of us know his intent anyway when he has been COMPLETELY SILENT about Wednesday's attack?

Ted Wilson is perfectly capable & comfortable making very strong statements against women's ordination, LGBT+ individuals, and evolutionists. He's made a lot of those. So where is his statement unequivocally condemning the white supremacist mob that stormed the Capitol Building?

To which I'll say, it's really hard to issue a statement condemning the very people who pay your salary through their tithes and offerings every week. He is silent because he knows, perhaps better than anyone else, just how many white supremacists there are bankrolling Adventism.

His silence is complicity. His silence is evil. But his silence keeps the coffers full and the racists comfortable, and in the end, that will probably be worth it to him. It'll probably be worth it to a lot of Adventist leadership.

I’ve had a few people mention the NAD statement in my mentions so let me reply here on that topic: I’m aware of their statement. I appreciate it, and I shared it the day it came out. Here it is again if you haven’t seen it:

https://twitter.com/nadadventist/status/1347322424287703041

I’m also aware that the NAD is a division of the GC. I’ve been writing for and/or about the church for about 8 years now so no need to explain church structure to me, thanks 🙃

Here’s the thing about the argument I’m seeing repeated that says, “well, the NAD issued a statement so the GC / Ted Wilson doesn’t have to.”

For starters, Ted Wilson HASN’T SHARED THE NAD’S STATEMENT TO ANY OF HIS CHANNELS!

ANN, the church’s official news outlet, posted the statement but Ted Wilson has his own Facebook and Twitter channels and has not shared the NAD’s statement. It takes 2 seconds to hit that retweet button and he hasn’t. So explain to me again how I shouldn’t read into his silence?

Secondly, even if he had shared the NAD’s statement (which he hasn’t), our nation’s capitol was attacked. The world church looks to him for guidance & he hasn’t said a thing about that even though he often writes strong statements about events in other countries (e.g., Burundi).

As I said in the replies earlier, having worked in both corporate and church communications, I can tell you silence IS a response. It is always a response. And when the response is silence, the people who hear that deafening silence are left to draw their own conclusions.